Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / August 4, 2019 | TBC Student Ministries - Youth Sunday 2019

Transcript

August 4, 2019 | TBC Student Ministries - Youth Sunday 2019 · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_04: Good morning.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_04: Welcome to Youth Sunday.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_04: My name is Connor Krause.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_04: I'm the student pastor here at TBC.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_04: We are so excited that you've joined us this morning.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_04: We've got a lot to get through this morning.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_04: A lot of wonderful things are happening in the student ministry.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_04: But before we do that, we've got a couple pictures that we want to show you.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_04: Like any good action movie, like any good Youth Sunday, we need to have a montage, right?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_04: It's just all part of it.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's not the same without it.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_04: And so a lot of the things that we're going to be talking about this morning are in these photos.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_04: And so I just hope that you enjoy it and get to see just a fraction of the things that we've been doing this morning.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_04: Or this summer.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_04: Please enjoy.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_09: Good morning.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_09: So as you guys saw, we did a lot of awesome stuff this summer.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_09: But I think for those of us that went on the New York trip, we would agree that it was probably the most impactful and exciting thing that we did this summer.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_09: We took a group, for those of you that don't know, of 27 down to New York.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_09: And 18 of those were students, and they were students that volunteered their time to come and just share the gospel with people that we encountered in New York.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_09: And so these are three of our students that went on the trip with us.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_09: And we've asked them to come up today and just share a little bit about the trip with you guys.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: So hi, I'm Zach Stockton, and uh this year was my first mission mission trip.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in preparation to go, we had to read a book titled The One Thing You Can't Do in Heaven.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this got me really excited to go evangelize.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh when we got there, I began with a survey method approach, which basically means you go up to someone, you say, Hey, I'm taking a quick survey on religion.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Can I ask you a question?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And to my surprise, most people in New York weren't super receptive to somebody they believed to be a salesperson.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So um my my hopes and you know I kind of felt down about that, but after some encouragement from my peers and from the leaders, and after people told me, you know, at least you're planting a seed, um, I began a new approach, and basically I just had genuine conversations with people, and I would just sit on a bench and say, Wonderful weather we're having, and boom, the conversation went from there.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, in my case, I didn't even have to bring up religion.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of something weighing on people's shoulders from the moment I said I was with the church.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh for example, I talked to a gentleman from the Caribbean, and his life story was incredibly interesting and inspiring, but through his experiences he believed that he had to be his own rock, and so he didn't have that strong shoulder that we have as Christians.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I was really sad not to hear.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: But by his own inquiries, I shared the gospel with him, and by the end of the conversation, he was repeating back to me what I was saying, and he was even asking questions that he had had for a really long time.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the very end of the conversation I gave him the Bible that we had been issued a handout, and he said he would read it.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean I didn't get his contact information, so the most I can do is hope and pray.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the amazing thing that we can do right here in Topeka.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: We can have those conversations, we can make those connections, we can invite people to church.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I encourage everybody to invite someone to church because you know we aren't promised tomorrow, and evangelism is the one thing we can't do in heaven.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: So let's make the best of our time right now.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_06: Hi, I'm Michaela McCorready.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_06: I'm gonna be junior this year.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_06: This was also my first missing trip.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_06: Um I've had many amazing conversations, but this one really moved me the most.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_06: Sunday morning.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_06: We had went to Hillsong Church, and there was an empty seat right between me and Hannah Connor's wife.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_06: And this lady had come up, her name was Camilla, and she had asked if she could sit there, and I said, of course.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_06: So she had sat there and she was very, very emotional while we were worshiping.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_06: And by the end, um we kind of sat back and talked to her a little bit to get to know where she was spiritually.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_06: And um she had grown up in a Catholic household, but really didn't believe in anything.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_06: Um but she kept going.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_06: She expected to go once, but something kept telling her to keep going, to keep keep going, and I think it was the Holy Spirit that really got to her.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_06: And I think it's amazing how God had given um given us to be there at the right time to be able to talk to her and explain it to her.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_06: She ended up accepting Jesus in her heart with us.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_06: Um but what I got from that is that no matter where you go, there's always gonna be someone like her, even if it's in a church.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_07: Hi, my name is Peyton Jones, and I'm going to be a senior this year.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_07: Um I was blessed with the opportunity to go on the mission trip this summer as well, and this was also my first one.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_07: Um I'll be honest, at first I was a little hesitant to sign up to go on this trip because I figured it was gonna be a lot of money.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_07: Um I've never been so far away from my family for so long.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_07: I knew my parents weren't really um comfortable with the idea of me going, and really it was just gonna be a big step out of my comfort zone.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_07: So um everything worked out perfectly fine.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_07: Um one of the days while we were on the trip, we were out doing some evangelism at Central Park, and I was with another student on the trip, and um we just walked up to a lady who was sitting on a bench, her name was Kim, and um we started a normal conversation, just asking easy questions like, Are you from New York?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_07: What's the best part about living in the city?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_07: What's the worst part?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_07: Just simple questions to keep a conversation going.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_07: And then we kind of transition transitioned into a conversation about religion.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_07: And she said that her family was Catholic, but religion has never really been anything that she's considered, which is just absolutely heartbreaking to hear.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_07: Um so we got to share the gospel with her and we kind of wrapped up our conversation, and I noticed she had started to cry by the end of it.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_07: And so um we asked if we could pray for her, and she just said she just asked us to be praying for a sense of what's wrong and right for her, because that's something that she's been struggling to find at this point in her life.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_07: And so we prayed with her and finished the conversation, and she was just still upset by the end of it.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_07: And I took something huge away from that, and that is you never really know what's going on in somebody else's life.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_07: They can act perfectly fine on the outside, but just be completely torn apart on the inside.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_07: So that situation has definitely opened my eyes to just more of the brokenness in the world and just the need for Jesus to be in the lives of so many more people.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_09: I just hope you guys are as proud of these folks as we are.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_09: All of our students that went on the trip this summer just did a phenomenal job, and we were really blessed to be able to take them along with us and be able to watch them grow and step out of their comfort zone.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_09: So give them one more round of applause as Connor comes up.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_04: Well, good morning again.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_04: And as we kind of trade off here, take the baton.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um I wanted to share a couple things with you this morning because I think our youth group is pretty awesome.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that the student ministry here at TBC, uh, though we do a lot of events and we have a lot of things that we do and a lot of things that we want to teach, the thing that really makes this student ministry click is the students themselves.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_04: And uh in a church like this, we kind of have a top-down youth ministry model, which means that, and philosophy, which is that the top part is is all of us who aren't in, we're not students.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_04: We've we've gone past that point.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_04: And by God's grace, whether it's through our own personal faith and spiritual maturity or just the wisdom that God has given us through the years, um, that we have an opportunity to pour into that next generation.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_04: That's the top.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_04: The bottom part, the the students where they come in is they have an opportunity to grow and to learn from all of the things that the rest of the faith community that they are part of, all the things that they can provide.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_04: But one of the things that happens when you have this sort of like top-down philosophy is that if we're not careful, we can innocently slip into a period where we begin to sometimes underestimate the students and all the things that they can do.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_04: We begin to sort of think of them as just these spiritual infants and rather than the people who are growing, um, sometimes close to adulthood, and are in this amazing transitory period.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_04: And so this morning, what I wanted to share with you is three different ways that I think our students here at TBC are really setting the pace for the rest of the church.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_04: You know, in the spring we uh we do an event called Big Weekend, and it's this kind of like weekend-long sort of retreat thing where we go to homes and have a couple teaching sessions.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_04: But this past spring, the verse that we, well, the verse that we put on the back of the t-shirts, which means it's the key verse, right?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_04: The verse that we put on the back of the t-shirts was 1 Timothy 4 12.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_04: And that says, Let no one despise your youth, and still you should be an example to the believers in speech and conduct in love and faith and in purity.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_04: And you know what?
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_04: I I think these students have really knocked that mission out of the park.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_04: I'm so proud, and I just kind of want to basically I just want to come up here and brag on our students for a little bit, because I think that we can learn a lot from the way in which that they are conducting themselves.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_04: And so the first way, and one of the ways that I think is really awesome, that I think they are setting the pace for the rest of the church, is in their boldness and their faith.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you know, we you've saw Lori and the students were just up here, and you saw some photos from going on the mission trip.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_04: Let me tell you how we were trying to sell the mission trip to the students, okay?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_04: Do you want to go to New York City and for two hours a day share the gospel with people on the streets?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_04: I can hear the like the social anxiety in some of us welling up as the idea of going out and sharing the gospel with people is such a foreign concept to some of us.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: But our students, they jumped at that opportunity.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_04: They said, no, I want to go to New York City, I want to share my faith with people, um, I want to do something going outside of my comfort zone, and not only that, I'm gonna pay money to do it.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna work extra shifts, I'm gonna work overtime, I'm gonna pick up odd jobs that the church community has given to me, I'm gonna reseal the parking lot, I'm gonna do all these things because I want to go and have the opportunity to share my faith.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_04: But when they go to New York City, it's not like they don't have the same kind of questions that we would have, right?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_04: What if what if people reject me?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_04: What if I don't really know what to say?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_04: What if they ask me a question that I don't really know how to answer?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_04: I don't, I haven't, you know, been a Christian for super long, so what what do I really have to give to them?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_04: But what I was impressed with was not that they got the answers to every single one of those questions, but rather that they went outside of their comfort zone and went ahead in boldness into this mission trip, even though those questions remained unanswered.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_04: And by the end of the week, because of their experience, they're able to say, you know what, when those people asked me those questions, it it wasn't that important because really I was able to just share the gospel with them, or I felt like God gave me the answers that I needed in that moment.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_04: But whatever it was, I was so impressed by the way our students went on in boldness.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that we have a lot to learn from that too.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_04: I know for myself the idea of evangelism is sometimes an uncomfortable topic because I enjoy my bubble of comfort.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_04: But I think the challenge for us is this that whether it's a neighbor or a coworker or somebody in like your spin class or quilting club, that you might be able to step a little bit outside of your comfort zone and have what we called on the trip a Jesus conversation.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_04: What I mean by that is you would have an intentional conversation with somebody where you purposefully brought up the name of Jesus Christ.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_04: You don't have to go into your entire testimony, your whole faith story, everything about it.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_04: It's not Genesis to Revelation, but it's about planting a seed with the name of Jesus.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_04: I think sometimes we we can go on in life and just presume that hopefully everybody will either come to us and ask about our faith, or that if they don't, maybe by the way that we act, people will just assume that we're Christians and draw closer to Christ.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_04: So I just challenge you, like our students, to sort of take that next step and have that conversation.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_04: The second way that I think our students are really setting the pace for us here at TBC is in the community that they have within the youth group.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_04: By my count, which is probably wrong, but by my count, we've got at least or close to 10 high schools represented in that in the youth group and well over a dozen middle schools.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_04: It's this really big melting pot coming together of students from different backgrounds, different families, different economic environments, just different experiences altogether.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_04: But they've made a cohesive group, and it's really fun to hang out with them because I sometimes lose track of which students are in which schools because they're all spending time with each other.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_04: But yet, despite them coming together, they haven't lost any of the things that make them unique, any of the things that really make them the wonderful individuals that they are.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_04: In our culture today, it's really easy to talk about, you know, Generation XYZ and the trends and the pros and the cons and the things that they're bringing along and to just kind of label an entire generation within a group of stereotypes.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_04: But our students are unique and they're special and they've got a fire for Jesus.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_04: It's kind of like um, you know, those the glass-walled candy stores.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_04: There are like a hundred of them in Branson.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_04: And those people who are making the can the hard candy where they take the different colors and they sort of bring it all together and make a tight uh roll out of it, and then they produce the little hard candy.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_04: You can still see the design, you can still see the individual parts, but you can't separate it.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_04: And the end result is much better than the individual part.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_04: That's kind of what it's like.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_04: And so I'm excited because I think, and if I'm being honest and I am biased, and I totally admit that, I think our student community is pretty great.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: But I think that we can be inspired by the way that our students are interacting in their community.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_04: And so I know that we've got Mulvaine going right now, and we've got cab across the street.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe you're a Mulvaine person, maybe you're a cab person, maybe some Sunday you switch a little bit.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_04: Get to know somebody that you haven't seen before.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe it's about asking somebody out to lunch that you met when we were shaking hands.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe it's just about getting into that small group or that Sunday school that you've kind of been holding out on.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe, as I'll talk about later, it's about gaining inspiration from the students themselves and being involved in the student ministry.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_04: But whatever it is, I think that we can learn from them.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_04: Because I think, to be honest with you, they're setting the pace for us there.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_04: The third and final way that I think our students here at TBC are really showing us up.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_04: Showing us up maybe isn't the right phrase, but man, there's certainly people we can get inspiration from, is in their passion for Christ.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_04: The reason that it's exciting is because our students today, they're like a submarine at the bottom of the ocean where all this pressure is pushing in on them from every single side.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_04: And like that submarine, they are trying to make sure that they can withstand that pressure so that they don't cave in.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_04: You know, unless you are a student right now, um, let me tell you something.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_04: Going through high school is not like it used to be.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_04: Going through middle school is not like it used to be.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_04: Um, even for me, um, though I had social media through part of my school experience, it is not the beast that it is today.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_04: And though it can be used for good, oftentimes that is where we're being told what we can and can't do, what we should and should not believe, what we can and can't say.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_04: And so our students are trying to walk through this white noise in this environment that they have, all these voices that are trying to convince them about how they need to be and what they need to act like.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_04: And through all of that, through all the busyness of their schedules and the things and the events that we have them doing, through all of that, it's like they're pointing towards Christ like a North Star.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_04: That they are cutting through the noise of what society has for them, and they're focusing on their faith, not as a crutch, but rather as a tool that they can use to navigate this really difficult environment.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_04: And so the exciting thing is that student ministry is able to take students who are in this really transitory, this um wonderful time of building and to pour into them.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_04: But this top-down model that I was talking about earlier, um, it only works if the top is pouring into the bottom.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_04: And so I want to ask you this morning and challenge you that you might consider being a part of the student ministry.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_04: There are a lot of ways that you can hop onto this bandwagon because we're doing a lot of great things and we want you to join in.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_04: There are a lot of different ways that you can be involved.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_04: But before you um maybe give or say the thing or a reason why you don't think you'd be fit for this, let me tell you a very quick story.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_04: Uh before I came to TBC when I was a student, I used to go to Shawnee Heights United Methodist Church.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_04: And um at that church, there is a, we go through confirmation, and the process of confirmation is the student, middle school, would ask somebody in the church to kind of basically sponsor them.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_04: And so um I asked a wonderful woman by the name of Winnie Haig, and Winnie actually wasn't my first choice, um, but she was a uh somebody who had come on the mission trip with us the summer prior.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_04: Winnie was um the pianist at our church, she was a widower, she had no theological education, um, she was a mean Scrabble player, um, and uh she was but she was somebody who I had kind of a cursory relationship with, and it was somebody who I had admired, gotten to know her during the mission trip.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_04: But through the weeks that followed, as I got to know Winnie and we met to go over the curriculum, it wasn't so much that I needed somebody to be this theological cornerstone in my life.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_04: I had people who were supporting me in my faith.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_04: What I did get from Winnie, though, was somebody who wasn't my parent, who wasn't my youth pastor, who wasn't just the pastor of my church, who said that they really cared about my faith and they wanted to see me grow.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_04: I saw in Winnie somebody who was consistent, somebody who was caring, she was supportive, encouraging, and she did give me spiritual guidance.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_04: She was also 74 years old when we started meeting together.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_04: And um, once I finished the confirmation process, I started going here to church, ended up going off into college, she sent me a birthday card every single year telling me how proud she was of me and all the things that I had been doing.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_04: And although our time together, you know, probably wasn't more than 20 hours and all of the time that we did spend together, all the conversations that we had, she left an indelible mark upon my life as a spiritual mentor, even though she wasn't able to answer all the questions I might have had as a, you know, quizzical eighth grader.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_04: But Winnie made a huge impact on my life.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_04: And so my question for you this morning is pretty simple.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_04: And it's just do you think that you would be willing to pour out just a little bit of yourself for a little bit of time into the lives of one of our students?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_04: Because I'm so impressed by their desire to learn more about Christ and grow in their faith.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_04: But the thing that I cannot provide and Lori cannot provide, no matter how hard we try, is enough hours in the day for us to meet with every single student to show them how important their faith is.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_04: And so if you have time for a cup of coffee once or twice a week, or once or twice a month, excuse me, or if you're willing to go to a football game in the fall or a play in the spring or something like that, if you're just willing to be that winny for one of the students in our ministry, just come up and talk with me, talk with Lori, or here on two Sundays, come to our booth at Discovery Sunday and let us answer any questions that you might have.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_04: But let me leave you at this.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_04: I just want to encourage you, because TBC is a wonderful community.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_04: It's a wonderful community of people.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_04: And you guys are all so supportive of the student ministry and the different ways in which you decide to do that.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_04: It's all critical to the way in which we function, that allow us to do all the fun things, important things, spiritual things that we're doing throughout the year.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_04: But I encourage you to get involved in the most fun ministry here at TBC because I think that you'll get a lot more out of it even than you expect.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_04: But before I close this in prayer, um I just want to point attention to um the interns that we had this summer.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_04: You know, we we bring in six interns to the student ministry, we burn them like rocket fuel, and then we kind of send them off back into college.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_04: They're a critical part of what we do.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_04: And we couldn't do it without them.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_04: Um, these interns had a tough task this summer.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_04: It was the first time in quite a number of years that we had six brand new interns.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_04: There were no carryovers from the last couple summers.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_04: And so, but they they took on these challenges that they had with a plum and they and they kind of went forward.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, believe me, if you've seen Summer Sizzle and all the things that we've got going on when 200 students crash down those doors, it's kind of an intimidating thing.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_04: But they took it on um and they took their charge and they did it wonderfully.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_04: So um we're going to we have a video that we just like to show you interviewing some of the interns because not all of them were able to be here today.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_04: And during that time, if you feel so led, the ushers are going to come forward during the video and they're going to um give you an opportunity to support the interns one last time with some of your resources.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_04: If you feel so led, but I if you don't, that's totally fine.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_04: I just ask that you would watch this video and just appreciate all the work and effort that our interns put into this summer.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um let me go ahead and pray for us.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_04: Father, we thank you for today.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_04: Lord, I'm so thankful for uh the Topeka Bible Church community that supports the student ministry.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_04: God, I ask that your spirit would move and might draw, um, help some more people who think that they might have a little bit to give to the next generation.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Father, we thank you for the interns and all the work and effort and energy that they poured into this summer.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_04: Most of all, God, we ask that you would be glorified by the things that we do and that we would make much of your name.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_04: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_04: Amen.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Drew Will, and I attend Manhattan Christian College.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: Hi, my name is Richard Welch, and I attend Kansas State University.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: Go cats.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_08: I am Hayley Cashman, and I'm going to Washburn University next year.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_05: I'm Macy Dressler.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_05: I go to Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Missouri.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, my name is Anna Holloway, and I am a current student at Calvary University.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_10: My name is Carter Williams, and I am currently going to Drury University.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: I expected the time in the office to be a lot more than spending time with kids.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: But in reality, we were able to spend a lot of time with the kids through going to lunch, through Sunday morning youth group, through Tuesday night Bible studies and missions trips, to where time spent with kids was vastly outnumbered the time spent in the office.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_08: I think that I got a lot of deeper relationships out of this than I expected.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_08: I thought a lot of the relationships with the students were going to be more surface level, and that wasn't the case, and that was really awesome.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: The best thing about spending time with students this summer had to have been all the energy that they brought and their willingness to get in and do whatever we had going.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: So whether that was game time, sermon time, or small groups, I really noticed that their willingness to get in and go and go full for it was amazing.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_03: I guess for me the best thing, or time rather, was playing games, but more so getting to know them, getting to know challenges they're facing, and it kind of brought me back down memory lane when I was their age and kind of be able to identify with those challenges and to not necessarily judge but to walk alongside and to say hey you're not alone.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: I went through it and you can go through it and be successful.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's like a two-in-one.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: So I would say Sky Ranch catapulting into New York.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: That was my favorite of all of them.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Sky Ranch and New York, those two.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_05: Um I love Sky Ranch.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_05: Um it was like one of the first times that I actually got to sit down and have conversations with students and make like actual connections.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_05: Where before we were having lots of fun and there was excitement and activities, but like there was no relationship yet, and so that was kind of a launching point for the rest of the summer and like getting to know them better.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_05: I found that the more enthusiasm or excitement or energy that I brought to whatever activity we were doing, um, regardless of if I felt like I was prepared for it or not, like the kids they fed off of that and they enjoyed it more in those moments.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_05: So that was pretty cool.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think my biggest takeaway was just knowing that when God presents me with an opportunity such as this internship, He has equipped me with everything that I need to complete it.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not alone, I have Him, and not only that, but I had uh people helping me and growing me and teaching me how to do it to the best of my ability.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_10: I had always kind of assumed that I needed to have some sort of degree to talk about Jesus, but I was wrong, and I think now it's just going from where you are at and learning that it's not about you, you just need to let Jesus shine through you and speak from your heart in where Jesus is.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_08: In the beginning of the summer, I think I was more of a my way or the highway kind of person, and I think throughout the summer and being on a team with five other people made me become more of a team member and more of a follower and made me a better leader in the process.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_03: So what challenged me was the students.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I know for me personally I needed to be a little bit more extroverted, and being constantly in contact with students and they genuinely wanted to know who I was, I realized that I needed to really humble of myself.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_08: The students are a lot more mature and a lot more responsible than they lead on sometimes.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_02: The kids that I were able to meet with lunch with and hang out with on Sunday mornings have a huge heart for God.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um I know a lot of people tend to think about teenagers as only caring about food and boyfriends and girlfriends and all that, but these kids that I hung out with had a huge love for God and love for ministry, and that was amazing for me to see.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: I think I would want TBC to know that there are kids in the youth group that like want to know more.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: They are longing to have uh people to look up to and people to give them answers because they're searching on like who God is and why should they follow God, and they're really like interested in knowing that and wanting to make their faith their own and looking for examples, and that's really cool to like be on the other side of that and get it be that example for them and see how excited they were about that.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_10: I guess I didn't know how much outreach that we just as the youth ministry tried to do.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_10: So we would do stuff like just going to the mall, but we also went to the big mission trip and went to New York and talked to people and um I guess just based on our size, we did a lot more than I was expecting us to be capable of doing.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_05: It is absolutely nothing without the volunteers that we have.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_05: Um I was blown away by just the amount of volunteers and the commitment level during summer sizzle when the interns needed lots and lots of help, and we had people just continually asking us how they could help us, and that was just incredible for me to experience this.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think my favorite thing about TBC is how they have events and opportunities for all ages, for the children's, but also for the youth group and the young adults, and then even how they intertwine opportunities that both groups of people can come together and have fellowship, and I think that's really awesome to see that.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_10: And all the volunteers that help come from the other ministries and come and help with the children's ministry is really nice too, and they're so excited to help and they have so much fun and the kids just love them.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: My favorite thing about TVC would definitely have to be uh the energy and the time and the money they put into the youth group and how much they value the kids, um, because that is our next generation of Christian leaders.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_08: I think TVC is super involved in every aspect, and I think that I see more events coming from TVC than I have any other church.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_08: I may be biased, but I just I'm so excited always to show up to any of the events and all the events that they put on for everybody who goes to the church.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_09: Our interns did a fantastic job this summer, you guys.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_09: And it was interesting because we always have a great group of interns every single year.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_09: It's always fun to bring them in and get to know them and serve alongside them.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_09: Um but this year was interesting in that it's been a while since we've had a whole brand new group.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_09: So none of our interns were returning.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_09: Um they all came in and just hit the ground running, picked it up from scratch, and they did a great job, and we're so proud of them.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_09: Um another thing that you heard them talk about quite a bit in the video was how impressed they were with the volunteers that we have at TBC.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_09: And right now we have a phenomenal group of people that are serving in a multitude of ways in our ministry, people that are doing things just like from hosting us uh during the weekend, being a host home, people that are in our mentoring problem or program right now that are working with students one-on-one and meeting with them.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_09: Um we have people that come in and serve on Wednesday nights, Sunday mornings as small group leaders.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_09: We are so thankful for every single one of them.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_09: They really do keep the motor running throughout the school year.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_09: And so if you here or over in the CAB building, if you've served in any of those areas in our ministry, if you'll stand up really quick, we would just like to acknowledge you for a second and say thank you.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_09: So I don't know if there's anybody over here or not, but thank you across the street.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_09: Thank you too.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_09: So just as a reminder, really quick, just because we have a great group right now doesn't mean that we don't always have spaces that we need to fill.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_09: Um we love the folks that we have working with us, but we also like to give them the availability to have time off to go see family or do things that they need to do.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_09: And so um to have extra people have backups, it's always great.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_09: We would love, love, love to talk with you at Discovery Sunday or after service today.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_09: Um we're just we love our kids, we love our students, we're so proud of them, we're so thankful for them, we're so thankful for a church that allows us to be able to pour into them and see them grow, and so we'd love for you guys to come alongside and be a part of that.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_09: Um if you'll pray with me this morning, we're gonna let you guys go.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_09: And then after that, if you have any questions about our ministry, please feel free to come talk to Connor and I.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_09: Heavenly Father, we just come before you this morning, and we are so thankful for TBC, and we're thankful for this group of students that you have given us the honor and privilege to work with, Lord.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_09: These students that we have are phenomenal, and just week after week they blow us away.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_09: We're so thankful that in the midst of all the things they have going on in their lives, that they have uh decided to seek you out, Lord, and to make you a focus and to get closer to you.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_09: We're thankful that they step out in courage and go out into the world and want to share your name and bring glory to you and make your name known.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_09: And Father, we just pray that as a staff that you would continue to equip us to be able to do that well.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_09: We pray that you would bring the people into our ministry that we need in order to continue to do that long term.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_09: And I just thank you for a church that supports us as we do that each and every week.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_09: We love you so much.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_09: I just pray that you'd be with our kiddos as they go into this new school year, and that you would continue to just equip them and grow them, Lord.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_09: It's in the name of your son, Jesus we pray.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_09: Amen.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_09: All right, you're dismissed.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_09: Thank you.